world of men's style / fashion / grooming

An UrbanDaddy Publication

09/10/2010

In the Mansion

As you may have heard, Ralph Lauren overhauled their New York store in the Rhinelander Mansion, and the result is a pretty spectacular new men’s only shop. The new version sprawls out over four stories and 20,000 square feet—an easy contender for the largest single-brand men’s clothing store in the world, and the perfect capstone for a $4 billion behemoth of branding.

There are already plenty of gushing tours through the place (hey, here’s a good one), but what struck us passing through is exactly how many nooks and crannies there are in the RL empire and how much space it takes to do justice to them all. There are tons of collaboration mixed in contextually, stuff like glass skulls, motorcycles and vintage dumbbells—all genuinely for sale. Even if you don’t buy them, they say a lot about what Ralph is, and the different personas of Black Label, Purple Label, RRL, RLX and Polo. It’s a smart move, and it makes the space feel more like a museum than a mansion. “Store” is a distant third.